Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/325

 TRIUm-H OF DEMOSTHENKS! 2'i S proof of rare fidelity and steadiness of mind in the Athenians. It is a proof that those noble, patriotic, and Pan-hellenic senti- ments, which we constantly find inculcated in his orations, throughout a period of twenty years, had sunk into the minds of his hearers ; and that amidst the many general allegations of cor- ruption against him, loudly proclaimed by his enemies, there was no one well-ascertained fact which they could substantiate before the Dikastery. The indictment now preferred by iEschines against Ktesiphon only procured for Demosthenes a new triumph. When the suf- frages of the Dikasts were counted, JEschines did not obtain so much as one fifth. He became therefore liable to the customary fine of 1000 drachmas. It appears that he quitted Athens im- mediately, without paying the fine, and retired into Asia, from whence he never returned. He is said to have opened a rhetor- ical school at Rhodes, and to have gone into the interior of Asia during the last year of Alexander's life (at the time when that monarch was ordaining on the Grecian cities compulsoiy restor ation of all their exiles), in order to procure assistance for return- ing to Athens. This project was disappointed by Alexander's death.* "We cannot suppose that ^schines was unable to pay the fine of 1000 drachmae, or to find friends who would pay it for him. It was not therefore legal compulsion, but the extreme disap- pointment and humiliation of so signal a defeat, which made him leave Athens. We must remember that this was a gratuitous challenge sent by himself; that the celebrity of the two rivals had brought together auditors, not merely from Athens, but from various other Grecian cities ; and that the effect of the speech of Demosthenes in his OAvn defence, — delivered with all his per- fection of voice and action, and not only electrifying hearers by the sublimity of its public sentiment, but also full of admirably managed self-praise, and contemptuous bitterness towards his rival — must have been inexpressibly powerful and commanding. Probably the friends of JEschines became themselves angry with him for having brought the indictment forward. For the effect ' Sec the various lives of ^l^schines — in Westermann, Scriptores Bio- graphic!, pp. 2G8, 2C9. 25*